My antennae started twitching about Trump and Isaacman on Monday, when space reporter Eric Berger (probably the best in the business) published this story for Ars Technica: Capitol Hill is abuzz with talk of the “Athena” plan for NASA.

Long story short, Athena was Isaacman's plan for cutting costs at NASA and restoring the agency's "mission-first" culture — and getting us back to the Moon, at a price we can afford and before China does. Needless to say, Athena involved upsetting an awful lot of well-anchored apple carts and taking way some gold-plated iron rice bowls.

For starters, Isaacman wants to ditch the stupidly expensive, technological dinosaur knowns as the Space Launch System (SLS), meant to carry Americans back to the Moon. Not only is SLS built from yesterday's disposable rocket parts, but "at $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program," interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (and full-time Transportation Secretary) said back in September. //

Washington read that as "Isaacman is too close to Elon Musk and too far from Lockheed," and that's when the long knives came out for the 42-year-old billionaire and record-setting private astronaut.

AND ANOTHER THING: "Old Space" refers to old-school contractors who have been in the business forever, mostly doing the same things in the same ways — and also to NASA. "New Space" encompasses the free-thinking startups, large and small — and hopefully to NASA under new leadership. //

Cliff_Hanger
a day ago
Thanks for the "ANOTHER THING."
I thought "Old Space" was a cheap knock-off cologne but couldn't figure out what it had to do with NASA.

anon-a-miss Cliff_Hanger
a day ago
It smells almost like "Old Spice", but not quite...

Why settle for Old Space cologne when you can use Musk! //

KS
a day ago
SLS was specified by the Senate to use existing equipment. "Senate Launch System"
The whole point is to spend money on companies that make nice paybacks to politicians.

The reason SpaceX can lauch so cheaply is because they do blow stuff up to find out what works and what doesn't.
If NASA did that, congresscritters would complain "They're wasting taxpayer money! I prefer other ways of wasting taxpayer money!"

I have seen this for 45 years, not just space but FAA. The ATC computer system was seriously obsolete in 1980, but Congress didn't want to allocate money to update it. One big deal to handle the ATC strike was "flow control" - monitoring how busy airspace would be so planes could be held on the ground when there would be delays. The PROTOTYPE was more capable than the deployed system, because Congress insisted the FAA use the obsolete IBM mainframes they bought in the 1960's instead of more modern computers.
(Which is why I think Air Traffic Control should be privatized and paid for by user fees, not funded by Congress. They would be able to make better decisions).

Snowblind KS
a day ago
Which Is crazy as IBM mainframes are transaction monsters. Always have been. But 20 years is a LONG time, 6 or 7 genrations.

I mean sure, the mean time between failures is 25 years.... but that does not mean you should keep them that long! Maintenance goes way up after 2nd Gen has passed, or 6 years. Cost less to replace them.

KS Snowblind
a day ago
These were 360/30's and 40's customized for real-time operation and called 9020's after the Univacs they replaced. By the 1980's, the connectors were suffering metal fatigue.
Both hardware and software had advanced quite a bit and newer more reliable distributed systems were possible.
KS Snowblind
a day ago
Better would be a distributed system. Even replacing the 360's with 370's would have been better, but PDP-10's were quite capable (the flow control prototype I mentioned was written for a PDP-10) and better at real-time work. Although minicomputers such as PDP-11's would do a lot of the I/O.
The problem was, the old mainframes were customized and software would not necessarily run on a newer 360/370 system.
What was done was to somehow get IBM or IBM clones to run the software.
Of course, if this was a government project, we'd still be working on it, and consultants would have made a lot of money.
BTW, back then, I was a subcontractor to DOT from a small company as their cash cow; that company never did make it (technology wasn't ready for a "specification language") but it did have a connection with the space program. HOS - Higher Order Software, started by Margaret Hamilton and Saydean Zeldin (sp?). Look up Margaret Hamilton - did a LOT for the Apollo program. //

polyjunkie
a day ago edited
Elon Musk will greet NASA from his condo on the moon by the time NASA builds a rocket to get there. And his grandchildren will greet NASA on Mars by the time it gets there.

Here’s the way fix NASA: Close it. Make in an Accounts Payable Desk with a list of projects it will pay for:

1) $5B for the first 30 day sojourn on the moon.
2)$2B for an additional 6 months.
3) 25B for the first round trip to Mars with a 30 day stay.
4) $100B for the first 2 year stay on Mars and return for 50 people.

Etc.